Chapter 23: The Lonely Barrow¶
Prologue: Grotdor, Pentarch of Flame¶
Fire answers. That’s what I tell myself when the dark closes in and the dead won’t stay buried. Fire answers when steel won’t bite, when prayers bounce off ancient bone, when some thing ten thousand years past its funeral decides it isn’t finished yet.
We stood in a tomb older than recorded history, and a king who’d been dust before Earthfall crawled out of his own sarcophagus with a sword and a grudge. The others threw everything they had at him. Elroy took hits that would’ve killed most men twice over. Perry put acid through its ribs. Dravyn set it burning from the inside out. Rust sent Dog in to tear at what was left.
Me? I did what I always do. Found the cleanest angle. Applied heat. Watched the flames eat what the centuries couldn’t.
Some people build nations with words and treaties and ledgers full of numbers. Perry’s good at that. Elroy’s good at making people believe in things. Dravyn’s good at making people afraid of the right things. Rust’s good at putting you back together when the world tries to take you apart.
I’m good at burning. And in the Stolen Lands, that’s worth more than anyone cares to admit.
— Grotdor, Pentarch of Flame, Kuthona 4710 AR
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I. The Lonely Warrior¶
Early Kuthona (Dec), 4710 AR
The barrow breathed dust and silence. Torchlight caught the edges of carvings so old they had lost all meaning—spirals and angular glyphs worn smooth by the patient grinding of ten thousand years. The air tasted of mineral cold and the faint char of Dravyn’s earlier conjurations, and at the heart of the burial chamber, standing before its own broken sarcophagus, the thing that had once been a warrior king held its ground.
It was massive in undeath, taller than Elroy by a handspan, its frame wrapped in corroded plate that still bore the ghost of ancient craftsmanship. A bastard sword—chipped, frost-pale, faintly humming with residual enchantment—hung in one skeletal fist. A shield rode the other arm, battered but raised with the mechanical precision of a fighter whose muscle memory had outlasted its muscles. The hollow sockets of its skull burned with a cold, considering intelligence. This was no shambling corpse. This was a guardian, and it had been guarding this place since before the stars fell.
Perry Marlowe’s mind was already racing. He’d spent the first moments of the encounter cataloguing what he could: the creature’s defenses were formidable, its armor turning aside analysis as stubbornly as it turned steel. His initial assessment of its vulnerabilities had yielded nothing—whatever this ancient king had been in life, the intervening millennia had scoured away the usual markers of weakness. But Perry dealt in evidence, not assumptions. He loaded a vial of alchemical ooze into Infernis, sighted along the bolt’s trajectory, and fired.
The shot struck true. Acid hissed across ancient bone and corroded mail, and the alchemical compound splattered across the warrior’s legs, congealing into a viscous mass that rooted it in place. The oozing, corrosive damage ate into the creature’s frame. Perry ducked behind a stone column, but the warrior’s burning gaze tracked him through the dark. Those dead eyes missed nothing.
Elroy surged forward with his shield high, closing the distance with the controlled aggression that had become his signature. His warhammer swept in—and went wide, the ancient warrior shifting with unsettling speed. Even a second swing failed to connect, the creature’s raised shield deflecting what its footwork couldn’t avoid. Undeterred, Elroy slammed his own shield forward with a resounding clang that echoed through the burial chamber, drawing the creature’s attention with the force of a challenge issued and accepted.
The warrior looked down at the ooze binding its feet. With contemptuous strength, it wrenched free—the effort costing it precious time but not its composure. It raised its shield, then brought the bastard sword down on Elroy in a sweeping arc. The blow went wide, but the force behind it sent a tremor through the stone floor. This thing hit like an avalanche.
Dog lunged at the warrior’s flank, jaws snapping, but the raised shield turned the wolf aside. Rust conjured a shimmering barrier of divine force around himself and waited, steady as always, reading the flow of the fight.
Then Dravyn spoke a word of power, and the barrow changed.
The wizard had been studying the creature—not its armor, not its sword, but the faint traces of moisture that even undeath couldn’t fully purge from ancient bone. Glowing runes traced themselves in the air as Dravyn called upon forces that stirred the inner fire of all things within the burst. The effect was catastrophic. The warrior’s frame seized as moisture was ripped from its structure, and persistent fire ignited across its body—not the bright orange of common flame, but a deep, consuming burn that ate inward. The creature staggered, its ancient sinews withering, its movements slowing as the dehydrating magic sapped its strength.
Grotdor closed the distance and struck with a water-aspected blast that hissed against the creature’s chest, then reached deeper—pulling at the elemental composition of the warrior’s body, extracting matter to weaken its resistance to further assault. The creature resisted the worst of it, but Grotdor had what he wanted: a foothold in its defenses.
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The second exchange was worse for the warrior and worse for Elroy in equal measure.
Perry’s analytical mind kept offering numbers that wouldn’t cooperate. His assessment of the creature’s openings came back poor—the ancient king’s defenses were simply too formidable for half-measures. He pivoted to support, brewing and downing a Cat’s Eye Elixir that sharpened his vision to catch the subtlest movement, then prepared a smoke bomb for the next exchange.
Elroy, however, found his rhythm. He drew himself to his full, considerable height and bellowed encouragement that rang through the barrow like a war horn, his voice carrying a conviction that settled into his companions’ bones and steadied their hands. Then he brought the Hammer of Storm and Fire down on the warrior’s shoulder with a crack that buckled ancient plate. A great crushing force, delivered with the joyful precision of a man who had found exactly the right tool for the work.
“Eyes on ME, bone-lord!”
Elroy Jenkins
The warrior’s jaw worked. It opened its mouth and began to sing.
The sound was not music in any recognizable sense. It was a funeral dirge in a tongue so ancient it predated every living language—a mournful, unnerving chant that rolled through the barrow like a wave of despair. The Lonely Dirge, the settlers would later call it when the Pentarchs told the tale, though none of them could reproduce the sound. The effect was immediate and devastating. Rust and Grotdor, farther from the psychic epicenter, shook off the worst of it—a momentary fog that cleared within seconds. But Elroy and Perry, closer to the source, felt their minds cloud with an ancient grief that would cling to them for hours.
Then the warrior struck. Even weakened, even burning, the blow that fell on Elroy was savage—the bastard sword carving through his guard with a force that drove him back a step. Elroy caught the worst of it on his shield, but the impact hammered through, and as the blade bit, something pulled. Life drained from Elroy’s body in a cold rush, stolen vitality flickering through the warrior’s bones. He felt himself diminish—a hollowing sensation, as though something essential had been siphoned away.
But as the warrior finished his attack, the persistent fire and acid inflicted by Perry and Dravyn roared to life. A consuming flame and burning acid ate through ancient bone and dried sinew. The creature was deteriorating visibly now, its movements slower, its frame blackening.
Dog lunged again, and this time found purchase—jaws closing with savage precision, tearing away what little remained of the warrior’s dwindling vitality. Rust extended a hand and spoke a word of divine challenge, a mental assault that struck at the creature’s faith. The warrior’s will held—barely—its ancient conviction turning aside the oracle’s power like a coin off a helmet.
Dravyn unleashed a lance of lightning that screamed through the burial chamber. The damage would have been devastating—but the warrior’s reflexes were impossible. It backhanded the bolt aside with its shield in a display of martial instinct that transcended death itself. Grotdor pressed in with fire, hammering the creature down further, his flames eating at what the lightning could not.
The final exchange was brutal and brief. The warrior raised its shield one last time and struck Elroy with desperate fury—two blows that each drained more of the Guardian’s vitality, leaving him hollowed and battered. His shield groaned under the punishment. But Elroy held. He held because that was what he did, because the others needed him to hold, because somewhere behind him Perry was calculating and Dravyn was burning and Rust was healing and Grotdor was closing the angle.
Then the fire came for the last time.
As the warrior finished his attack on Elroy, the persistent flames and acid roared once more—a consuming burning acid fire that found a creature already at death’s door. Ancient bone blackened and cracked. The bastard sword clattered from skeletal fingers. The warrior’s jaw worked once—some final gesture of defiance—but the flames consumed it before the blow could land. The Lonely Warrior collapsed into a heap of ash and embers, ten thousand years of duty finally, irrevocably ended.
The barrow fell quiet. Ancient dust settled. The smell of old smoke hung in the still air, and for a long moment, no one moved.
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II. The Spoils of the Barrow¶
As the embers cooled, the party gathered around what remained of the warrior king. The creature’s equipment had survived its destruction with the same uncanny preservation that had sustained everything in the barrow—ancient magic that maintained what time should have destroyed.
The bastard sword drew immediate attention. Perry examined it with professional thoroughness, turning it in the torchlight. The blade was cold iron—genuine cold iron, not the cheap imitations that frontier smiths sometimes peddled—and it bore an enchantment that hummed faintly against Perry’s fingertips. An earthbinding rune, capable of dragging airborne creatures back to the ground. They named the blade Downfall, and Elroy claimed it as a backup weapon, though Perry quietly noted that the earthbinding rune would serve Infernis better—as the party’s sole ranged specialist, he could ground flying threats from a distance.
A sturdy helmet of brown-painted steel went to Rust after brief deliberation—its enchantment could ward against mental debilitation, and the oracle’s lower defenses made the protection valuable. The warrior’s chainmail yielded a potency enhancement that Elroy transferred to his own armor, pushing his already formidable defenses to heights that made Rust shake his head in quiet disbelief. A reinforced shield joined Elroy’s kit as a reserve, and a gold bangle of ancient craftsmanship rounded out the spoils.
After the equipment was catalogued, Perry led an examination of the barrow’s construction. The investigation confirmed what they had suspected: warding runes carved throughout the structure had magically enhanced every creature interred within, elevating them far beyond their natural capabilities while they defended the graves. The skeletal champions, the bat swarms, the warrior king—all had been fighting at a strength that the barrow’s ancient builders had designed to ensure no grave-robber survived the attempt. Outside these walls, the creatures would have been merely dangerous. Inside, they had been devastating.
The party elected to camp in the barrow itself. With the undead destroyed, the ancient stone offered better shelter than the winter rain that hammered the hills outside. Rust curled up in a corner with Dog, unfazed. Grotdor camouflaged the entrance so thoroughly that nothing would disturb them. Perry cooked a hearty meal over a carefully vented fire—shepherd’s pie for Elroy, whose stolen vitality needed every advantage that warmth and sustenance could provide. By morning, the hollowed sensation had faded. The Guardian was whole again.
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III. The Works of Kuthona¶
Kuthona (Dec), 4710 AR
The Pentarchs returned to Stormfire Reach as the cold of Kuthona (Dec) settled over the Stolen Lands in earnest. Heavy rains lashed the rocky terrain, turning the roads to mud and the Thorn River to a roaring brown torrent that tested the young capital’s drainage. But the kingdom’s coffers were full—months of careful management had built a treasury that Perry regarded with something approaching satisfaction—and the council had ambitious plans for every copper.
Grotdor took charge of Wyrmwatch’s expansion first. The settlement needed housing, and the Pentarch of Flame intended to deliver it. His initial attempt met with disaster—construction crews stumbled through one setback after another as foundations shifted in the marshy ground. Grotdor stared at the chaos with the particular displeasure of a man accustomed to precision, committed a portion of the Pentarchy’s political capital to a second effort, and the result was spectacular. Houses rose with remarkable efficiency, entire blocks of sturdy timber-frame dwellings climbing along the riverbank. Rust immediately earmarked the waterfront lots for future development, envisioning the humble structures evolving into proper estates.
Perry drove the month’s planning with his usual methodical precision. At Oleg’s Trading Post—the frontier waystation where the Pentarchs had first set foot in the Stolen Lands—he drew up plans, gathered resources, and formally established a new settlement: Olegton. The investment was significant but manageable, and when the paperwork was filed, Athanor had three settlements. The old trading post, which had once been the only outpost of civilization in the Stolen Lands, was now a village with a charter and a future.
In Stormfire Reach itself, Perry oversaw the completion of the Town Hall. The structure had been under construction for months, its stonework rising slowly through the autumn, and now the final timbers were set and the doors hung. The building gave the capital a proper civic center—a place where the Pentarchy’s business could be conducted with the dignity that governance demanded, where petitioners could present their cases before the council, where the growing machinery of the thaumocratic state could find permanent quarters. It was, in its way, as much a milestone as the founding itself.
A pier followed, extending into the Thorn River from the capital’s newest district. The construction required lumber and careful engineering—pilings driven into the riverbed, a platform extending over the current—but the result connected Stormfire Reach to its lifeblood in a tangible way. Barges could dock. Fishermen could unload their catches without wading through mud. The river, which had always defined the settlement, was now truly part of its infrastructure.
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IV. A Growing Nation¶
But the month’s most consequential achievement belonged to Elroy, and it began with an act of diplomacy rather than war.
The Sootscale kobolds had been a presence in the hills south of Stormfire Reach since before the Pentarchy existed—a cautious, mineral-rich tribe that had survived the Stolen Lands through a combination of subterranean cunning and a willingness to negotiate when negotiation served better than conflict. Elroy rode to their caverns with an offer: protection, prosperity, and a place in the nation they could see growing around them, in exchange for their fealty and their cooperation.
The result exceeded every expectation. The kobolds’ chieftain accepted the terms with an enthusiasm that suggested the tribe had been waiting for precisely this kind of offer—a strong nation that would value their skills rather than exploit their vulnerability. Their march was immediately claimed as Athanoran territory, and the Sootscale caverns—already functioning as a worksite rich in ore—became a formal asset of the kingdom. Former enemies became citizens of the Stormfire Pentarchy, and Elroy returned to the capital with the quiet satisfaction of a man who understood that the strongest fortifications are built from trust.
Dravyn claimed a new march of forested territory adjacent to Wyrmwatch, expanding Athanor’s borders deeper into the woodland that pressed against the settlement’s northern edge. The surveyors pushed into the trees with arcane instruments and stone cairns, marking boundaries that would define the nation’s shape for years to come. The Magister then turned his attention to the arts, encouraging the kingdom’s growing community of craftspeople to produce a masterwork—a piece of art or artifice that would add to Athanor’s reputation as a place where skill and scholarship were valued above brute strength.
Elroy established a lumber camp in the nearby forest, work crews felling timber and floating logs downstream toward the capital. The operation would take time to fully integrate into the kingdom’s economy, but the sound of axes echoing through the winter forest was a promise of resources to come. He directed a fishing expedition in the Thorn as well, hauling in enough to help offset the growing demands of a nation with three settlements and an expanding population.
Then came the farms.
Harrim—the gloomy dwarven cleric who served as Viceroy—was tasked with establishing farmland in the hills near the capital. The terrain was difficult, the soil stubborn, and the season unforgiving. Linzi lent her organizational talents to support the effort, and the result defied every pessimistic prediction the dwarf had muttered. The land yielded so completely that the work crews established twice the farming infrastructure anyone had thought possible. Two full marches of farmland spread across the hillsides, and the settlers who staked their claims christened the operation Doom Falls Farm—named for the nearby cascades, and because Harrim, ever the servant of Groetus, reminded anyone who listened that doom falls on all things eventually, but that was no reason to pay full price for wheat.
Rust built roads through the hills—the Rusty Road, the settlers called it—connecting the kingdom’s infrastructure in a web that made travel faster, trade easier, and the young nation feel, for the first time, like something more than a collection of outposts. The omens were read and found favorable, though no kingdom event tested the council’s resolve this month. Sometimes the signs simply predicted calm.
When Perry tallied the month’s work—three settlements, a completed town hall, new housing, a pier, a lumber camp, two marches of farmland, roads through the hills, a kobold alliance, and a territory that now stretched from Oleg’s Trading Post to the Sootscale caverns—even the halfling allowed himself a moment of quiet satisfaction. The furnace of Athanor was burning bright.
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V. The Den of the North Wind¶
Late Kuthona (Dec), 4710 AR
The Pentarchs set out from Stormfire Reach again in the final days of Kuthona (Dec), heading south toward the Tuskwater. Heavy rain hammered the rocky lakeshore—the kind of relentless downpour that cut exploration time in half and made every step treacherous on the slick stone. They had a target: Howl of the North Wind, a warg with a bounty on its head, known to haunt the reaches south of the great lake.
The Tuskwater’s shores were grim territory—stone and scree with almost no greenery, the kind of landscape that discouraged settlement and attracted predators. The rain drummed against Elroy’s armor and ran in rivulets down Perry’s duster as the party picked their way along the shore. Dog’s hackles were up, the wolf’s ears flat against his skull.
They found the cave before midday. The entrance was unmistakable—a natural opening in the rock face, its approaches littered with bones, old bloodstains, patches of fur, and ribs picked clean. The brown stains of old kills darkened the stone in overlapping layers that spoke of years of habitation. From deep within, voices echoed—barks, yips, growls, and beneath them, something deeper and more guttural. Two distinct speakers, both using a tongue that none of the party recognized at first.
Perry crept forward with the practiced silence of a man who understood that information was the most valuable weapon in any arsenal. From behind a rain-slicked boulder, he confirmed the tactical picture: wolves, several of them, and at least one creature far larger than any wolf. The voices spoke in the language of giants. Perry couldn’t parse the words, but the tone carried meaning enough—command, deference, the casual brutality of predators at rest in their den.
The party convened behind the cover of the rocks. Trolls regenerate, Perry noted—but fire and acid stopped the regeneration cold. Grotdor flexed his scarred knuckles without comment. The plan formed with the efficiency of a group that had fought together long enough to know each other’s strengths without discussion: Elroy would walk in first, drawing attention to himself as the party’s anvil, while the others positioned themselves to strike.
“Why don’t I just walk right out in front, so they charge toward me, and then you can blast them.”
— Elroy Jenkins
The Guardian stepped into the blood-splattered cave, his armor glinting in the dim light. The wolves barked the alarm.
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VI. Howl¶
Combat erupted with the fury of a den disturbed.
Wolves surged from the darkness in waves—not the scrawny, half-starved creatures that haunted the fringes of civilization, but large, well-fed predators that moved with coordinated aggression. The first hit Elroy before he’d fully set his stance, jaws clamping down on his arm with enough force to test the limits of his shield’s absorption. A second burst from the cave and slammed into Grotdor, fangs tearing through his armor before the kineticist could react. More repositioned behind the first rank, filling the cave mouth with snarling bodies.
Elroy brought the Hammer of Storm and Fire down on the nearest wolf’s skull. The critical blow caved in its ribs despite a disappointing weight behind the strike, and the creature staggered but didn’t fall. Elroy banged his shield and drew the pack’s collective fury toward himself—exactly where he wanted it.
Perry activated his smoke bomb, filling his position with concealing haze, then turned his analytical mind on the wolves. His assessment was devastatingly thorough—armor, lowest vulnerability, attack patterns—and he shared the intelligence with the party, sharpening every blade and bolt that would follow. He brewed another Cat’s Eye Elixir and downed it, his vision cutting through the smoke and rain like a hawk’s.
Dravyn assessed the battlefield with cold precision. Three wolves had clustered in a convenient line, and the wizard extended his hand and spoke a word of power. Lightning screamed through the cave in a blinding lance, sending a massive electrical fury that blasted through the wolves in sequence. Two were driven to the edge of death, their scorched fur smoking. A third was badly hurt. But the troll—the larger shape that lurked deeper in the cave—remained untouched, still hidden in the darkness.
Grotdor answered the wolf that had bitten him with the only language he truly trusted. He called fire to his hands and drove a blast into the creature’s face—a critical strike that delivered searing damage and left persistent flames eating at its fur. Then he shaped a tiny bird of fire that streaked through the cave in a curving line, catching wolves and troll alike. The wolves took glancing damage. The troll took the full force, its regeneration meeting its weakness for the first time.
Dog surged forward at Rust’s command, jaws closing on a wolf with devastating precision—a critical strike that nearly killed the creature outright. Then Rust turned his attention to the troll, conjuring slivers of cold iron that streaked across the cave and hammered into the creature’s hide. The needles punched through, and the troll’s blood ran black.
A wolf charged Elroy from the flank—a desperate, fifty-foot rush that ended in a strike of savage accuracy. The blow hammered through, and Elroy absorbed it without flinching, saving his shield for what he knew was coming.
Then the cave mouth darkened.
It pounced from the shadows with forty feet of fluid, predatory movement—oil-black fur, a mane of midnight iridescence, a face that was almost humanoid. Eyebrows that could express. Lips that could enunciate. It was not a wolf. Not truly. It was something older, something aware, with an intelligence that gleamed behind lupine eyes like lamplight behind glass.
The troll emerged behind it—green-skinned, big-bellied, with wildly oversized eyes and a jaw that could swallow a halfling whole. It rushed toward Dravyn with the blind confidence of a creature that had never met anything it couldn’t kill. Its strike fell short, and as it snarled in the language of giants, Dravyn—who spoke the tongue—understood perfectly.
Finally, the ones that Hargulka has sent me.
Hargulka. A name to remember.
And then Howl of the North Wind did exactly what its name demanded. The warg threw back its almost-human head and howled—a sound that was part battle cry, part prayer, and part something else entirely. Divine power rippled outward from the creature in a visible wave, settling over every wolf and the troll like a benediction. The wolves stood straighter. The troll’s grin widened.
Rust’s eyes went wide. He recognized the prayer. A blessing—a divine blessing, the kind that came from faith and devotion and the favor of powers beyond mortal comprehension. The goblin oracle looked at the warg with new understanding and something that might have been professional interest.
The warg watched them from the cave mouth with knowing, almost-human eyes. The troll tasted the air. The wolves circled, burnt and bleeding but emboldened by their master’s prayer. And somewhere, in the name Hargulka, a larger threat began to take shape—one that would test the Stormfire Pentarchy in ways the Lonely Warrior’s barrow never could.
The rain hammered down. The cave stank of blood and wet fur and something ancient. And the battle was only beginning.
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